The advent of cloud-based computing architectures has opened new possibilities for the rapid and scalable deployment of virtual Web stores, media outlets, and other on-line sites or services. In general, a cloud-based architecture deploys a set of hosted resources such as processors, operating systems, software and other components that can be combined or strung together to form virtual machines. A user or customer can request the instantiation of a virtual machine or set of machines from those resources from a central server or management system to perform intended tasks or applications. For example, a user may wish to set up and instantiate a virtual server from the cloud to create a storefront to market products or services on a temporary basis, for instance, to sell tickets to an upcoming sports or musical performance. The user can lease or subscribe to the set of resources needed to build and run the set of instantiated virtual machines on a comparatively short-term basis, such as hours or days, for their intended application. Likewise, entities such as companies, corporations and universities can utilize clouds in order to pool their internal computing resources in order to perform various computing processes.
Typically, when determining the usage of a cloud, the hardware usage of a particular virtual machine is measured. For example, when determining the cost for leasing cloud resources, a vendor of the cloud will measure the hardware resources, i.e. processor cycles, amount of memory, etc., used by a particular customer.